Lingue Straniere - Tracce

Pag. 6/34 Sessione ordinaria 2010

Seconda prova scritta

Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca

PL0A - ESAMI DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO DI ATTUALITÀ – LINGUA FRANCESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Egalement entendu par l'APCE, le docteur Luc Hessel, représentant du Groupe des producteurs

européens de vaccins (EVM), a pour sa part affirmé que "les vaccins pandémiques ont été

développés et testés de façon rigoureuse" et qu'ils ont été administrés "de façon satisfaisante" à des

millions de citoyens européens.

"Les vaccins H1N1 ont démontré leur efficacité et leur tolérance à travers des essais cliniques chez

des milliers d'individus de tous âges dans le respect des procédures réglementaires les plus

strictes", a-t-il poursuivi pour répondre aux accusations du docteur Wodard. Lequel estimait, dans

une proposition de recommandation présentée le 18 décembre avec treize autres membres de

l'Assemblée parlementaire, que les sociétés pharmaceutiques avaient incité les autorités à gaspiller

des ressources destinées aux soins de santé en faveur de "stratégies de vaccination inefficaces".

Considérant que des millions de personnes en bonne santé (plus de 38 millions de vaccinations ont

été effectuées en Europe) ont ainsi été exposées inutilement "au risque d'effets secondaires non

connus de vaccins n'ayant pas été suffisamment testés", les signataires de ce texte estiment que les

47 Etats membres du Conseil de l'Europe devraient demander "des enquêtes immédiates" sur les

conséquences du déclenchement de la pandémie aux niveaux nationaux et européen. Le bureau de

l'APCE a prévu d'examiner, vendredi 29 janvier, les suites à donner à cette proposition.

Catherine Vincent, « Le Monde », 27 janvier 2010

Compréhension

- Qu’est-ce que l’OMS a déclaré le 26 janvier à l’Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe?

- Précisez les accusations de l’épidémiologiste Wodard.

- Expliquez la phrase « l’OMS ne s’en retrouve pas moins sur la sellette ».

- Qu’est-ce que le docteur Fukuda a par contre déclaré en défense de l’OMS ?

- Pourquoi est-ce que l’OMS a décrété l’état pandémique de la grippe A ? Précisez les nouveaux

critères adoptés pour définir une pandémie.

- Reportez les déclarations du docteur Hessel à propos des vaccins.

- Pourquoi quelques membres de l’APCE parlent-ils de « stratégies de vaccinations inefficaces »?

- Quand est-ce qu’on va examiner les suites à donner à l’affaire?

Production

- Résumez le texte en quelques lignes.

- Quelle est votre opinion sur la gestion sanitaire de la grippe A de la part de l’OMS? Quelles

mesures ont été prises dans votre Pays pour faire face à la pandémie?

____________________________

Durata massima della prova: 6 ore.

È consentito soltanto l’uso dei dizionari monolingue e bilingue.

Non è consentito lasciare l’Istituto prima che siano trascorse 3 ore dalla dettatura del tema.

Pag. 7/34 Sessione ordinaria 2010

Seconda prova scritta

Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca

PL0A - ESAMI DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO LETTERARIO – LINGUA INGLESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

“Do kindly tell us who these ladies are,” asked Mrs Moore.

“You’re superior to them, anyway. Don’t forget that. You’re superior to every one in India except

one of two of the Ranis, and they’re on an equality.”

Advancing, she shook hands with the group and said a few words of welcome in Urdu. She had

learned the lingo, but only to speak to her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms, and of

the verbs only the imperative mood.

As soon as her speech was over, she inquired of her companions, “Is that what you wanted?”

“Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language, but we have only just come to

their country.”

“Perhaps we speak yours a little,” one of the ladies said.

“Why, fancy, she understands!” said Mrs Turton.

“Eastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner,” said another of the ladies.

“Oh yes, they’re English-speaking.”

“But now we can talk; how delightful! ” cried Adela, her face lighting up.

“She knows Paris also,” called one of the onlookers.

“They pass Paris on the way, no doubt,” said Mrs Turton, as if she was describing the movements

of migratory birds. Her manner had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the

group was westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.

“The shorter lady, she is my wife, she is Mrs Bhattacharya,” the onlooker explained. “The taller

lady, she is my sister, she is Mrs Das.”

The shorter and the taller ladies both adjusted their saris, and smiled. There was a curious

uncertainty about their gestures, as if they sought for a new formula which neither East nor West

could provide. When Mrs Bhattacharya’s husband spoke, she turned away from him, but she did

not mind seeing the other men. Indeed, all the ladies were uncertain, cowering, recovering,

giggling, making tiny gestures of atonement or despair at all that was said, and alternately fondling

the terrier or shrinking from him. Miss Quested now had her desired opportunity; friendly Indians

were before her, and she tried to make them talk, but she failed, she strove in vain against the

echoing walls of their civility. Whatever she said produced a murmur of deprecation, varying into a

murmur of concern when she dropped her pocket-handkerchief.

From A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Pag. 8/34 Sessione ordinaria 2010

Seconda prova scritta

Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca

PL0A - ESAMI DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO LETTERARIO – LINGUA INGLESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Answer the following questions.

1. Who are the “ladies” Mrs Moore refers to in line 1?

2. Who are the participants in the conversation?

3. How does Mrs Turton consider Indian people?

4. Does Mrs Turton’s command of the natives’ language allow her to speak with them? How?

Justify your answer by referring to the text.

5. What are Mrs Moore’s and Adela’s attitudes towards the Indian ladies?

6. What does Mrs Turton’s comment, “Why, fancy, she understands!” show?

7. Is Mrs Turton really self-confident? Substantiate your answer with reference to the text.

8. “They pass Paris on the way…” What does Mrs Turton associate natives with by using this

expression?

9. What do the Indian ladies’ gestures and behaviour reveal?

10. Why doesn’t Miss Quested succeed in establishing a relationship with the Indian ladies?

SUMMARIZE the content of the passage.

COMPOSITION:

How does the passage explore the relationship between people belonging to two different cultures?

Discuss your views with reference to the text in a 300-word essay.

Alternatively, discuss whether and how it is possible to overcome or reduce the culture clash

between different ethnic groups in a period of mobility and globalization like the one we are living

through today. Write about 300 words on the topic.

____________________________

Durata massima della prova: 6 ore.

È consentito soltanto l’uso dei dizionari monolingue e bilingue.

Non è consentito lasciare l’Istituto prima che siano trascorse 3 ore dalla dettatura del tema.

Pag. 9/34 Sessione ordinaria 2010

Seconda prova scritta

Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca

PL0A - ESAMI DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO DI ATTUALITÀ – LINGUA INGLESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Why does music move us?

In the most basic terms, sound is merely a pressure wave that ripples through air. So how does the

combination of sound waves that we know as music become, as Tolstoy put it, “the shorthand of

emotion”? Or, to put it another way, how can mechanical vibrations have such a moving effect?

The answer, according to Philip Ball, author of The Music Instinct, lies not in the notes themselves,

but in our brains. Whatever your favourite kind of music, your brain has to work hard to make sense

of it. Its remarkable skill at pattern detection will take the extraordinary richness of a note on a

piano or flute – which is crammed with harmonics – and magically collapsed it in our heads, so that

we perceive it as a single note rather than a forest of overtones.

“We are pattern seekers,” explains Ball, “and music helps us to find patterns in sound. We come

equipped with all sorts of rules of thumb to make sense of what we hear, and those are the brain

mechanisms that we use to organise sound and make sense of music.”

Medical scanners have shown that this process is not limited to one part of the brain. Different

aspects of music activate different areas: we use our temporal lobe to process melody and pitch, our

hippocampus to recover musical memories and our “rhythm-processing circuits” to fire up motor

functions (which might explain why it is hard to sit still when listening to Lady Gaga, or tunes with

similarly propulsive beats).

Interestingly, the brain gives out the same signal of confusion when it encounters examples

sentences of that sense make don’t, like this one, as music whose “syntax” seems wrong, as when

the chords don’t seem to fit. And if you study how we react to patterns of notes, you find there is

something special about a pitch that is double the frequency of another – the interval better known

as an octave.

The biggest question, however, is whether this kind of mental circuitry is designed specifically to

handle music, or if songs and tunes are just “auditory cheesecake”, as Harvard University’s Steven

Pinker puts it – sounds which accidentally generate pleasure, via neural systems that evolved to

respond to other kinds of stimuli?

The disappointing truth, says Ball, is that we just don’t know. But we do know that the way we

learn to appreciate music is profoundly affected by how we were raised. A few years ago, Ball

wrote in New Scientist about how music seems to have a national character, probably as a result of

the rhythms and cadences of each different language. The English tend to vary the pitch of their

speech, and the length of their vowels, more than the French, and their composers follow suit in the

rhythms and intervals they use. On the latter measure, Elgar was found to be the most “English”

composer – which perhaps helps explain why his Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 is at the

heart of the Last Night of the Proms.

Pag. 10/34 Sessione ordinaria 2010

Seconda prova scritta

Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca

PL0A - ESAMI DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO DI ATTUALITÀ – LINGUA INGLESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Similarly, concepts of what is harmonious boil down to a matter of convention, not acoustics. Many

old fogeys struggle with modern music and complain that it is dissonant. “Actually, dissonance –

horrible clashing notes – has always been in music,” says Ball. “Listen to Beethoven and Chopin,

which are full of it. It is a matter of convention: what we regard as consonant now was thought

dissonant in the Middle Ages.”

For Ball, the definition of the “music instinct” is that we are predisposed to make the world a

musical place. Apart from the tiny proportion of the population who really are tone-deaf, it is

impossible to say: “I am not musical.” Even if it may seem that way whenever you get dragged

along to the karaoke. Adapted from The Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2010

Answer the following questions.

1. What is music?

2. According to Philip Ball, what is the moving effect of music related with?

3. How do we perceive the richness of a note? Why?

4. How do we make sense of music?

5. Which areas of the brain are activated by music?

6. When does the brain give signals of confusion?

7. Is our brain designed to handle music?

8. What affects the way we learn to appreciate music?